Ancient Egypt - From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest

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Published in 2011 by Britannica Educational Publishing(a trademark of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc.)in association with Rosen Educational Services, LLC29 East 21st Street, New York, NY 10010.Copyright 2011 Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. Britannica, Encyclopdia Britannica,and the Thistle logo are registered trademarks of Encyclopdia Britannica, Inc. All

rights reserved.

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First Edition

Britannica Educational PublishingMichael I. Levy: Executive EditorJ.E. Luebering: Senior ManagerMarilyn L. Barton: Senior Coordinator, Production ControlSteven Bosco: Director, Editorial Technologies

Lisa S. Braucher: Senior Producer and Data EditorYvette Charboneau: Senior Copy EditorKathy Nakamura: Manager, Media AcquisitionKathleen Kuiper: Manager, Arts and Culture

Rosen Educational ServicesJeanne Nagle: Senior EditorNelson S: Art DirectorCindy Reiman: Photography ManagerMatthew Cauli: Designer, Cover DesignIntroduction by Sean Price

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ancient Egypt : from prehistory to the Islamic conquest / edited by Kathleen Kuiper. 1st ed.p. cm. (The Britannica guide to ancient civilizations)

In association with Britannica Educational Publishing, Rosen Educational Services.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-61530-210-9 (eBook)1. EgyptCivilizationTo 332 B.C. 2. EgyptSocial life and customsTo 332 B.C. 3.EgyptCivilization332 B.C.-638 A.D. 4. Egypt--Social life and customs. I. Kuiper,Kathleen.DT61.A612 2010932dc22

2010008661

On the cover:A golden image of the boy king Tutankhamen, provided by his funerarymask. Romilly Lockyer/The Image Bank/Getty Images

On pages 15, 31, 42, 59, 84, 102, 114, 133, 149, 178: DEA/C. Sappa/De Agostini/GettyImages


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CONTENTS

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46

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C 1: T S A E 15Ancient Egyptian Civilization 15Life in Ancient Egypt 15

The King and Ideology: Administration, Art, andWriting 19

Sources, Calendars, and Chronology 24Egyptology: The Recovery and Study of Ancient

Egypt 27

C 2: T E P 31Predynastic Egypt 31The 1st Dynasty (c. 2925c. 2775 ) 35The 2nd Dynasty (c. 2775c. 2650 ) 36

Egyptian Law 37The 3rd Dynasty (c. 2650c. 2575 ) 38 Imhotep 40

C 3: T O MKm 42The Old Kingdom (c. 2575c. 2130 ) 42 The 4th Dynasty (c. 2575c. 2465 ) 42 The 5th Dynasty (c. 2465c. 2325 ) 45 Pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx 46

The 6th Dynasty (c. 2325c. 2150 ) 49 The 7th and 8th Dynasties(c. 2150c. 2130 ) 51

The First Intermediate Period 51 The 9th Dynasty (c. 21302080 ) 51 The 10th (c. 2080c. 1970 ) and 11th

(20811938 ) Dynasties 52The Middle Kingdom 53 The 12th Dynasty (1938c. 1756 ) 53 The 13th Dynasty (c. 1756c. 1630 ) 56The Second Intermediate Period 57

C 4: T Nw Km T Im P 59The New Kingdom: The 18th Dynasty 59 Ahmose 59 Amenhotep I 60 Valley of the Kings 61 Thutmose I and Thutmose II 61

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65 Hatshepsut and Thutmose III 62 Amenhotep II and Thutmose IV 64 Foreign Inuences During the Early 18th

Dynasty 65 Amenhotep III 66 Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton) 68 The Aftermath of Amarna 70 Ay and Horemheb 72The Ramesside Period (19th and 20th Dynasties) 72 Tutankhamens Tomb 73 Ramses I and Seti I 74 Ramses II 74 Valley of the Queens 75 Merneptah and the Last Years of the 19th Dynasty 75 The Early 20th Dynasty: Setnakht and Ramses III 76 Ramses IV 77 The Later Ramesside Kings 78The Third Intermediate Period 80

The 21st Dynasty 80 Libyan Rule: The 22nd and 23rd Dynasties 81 The 24th and 25th Dynasties 83

C 5: T L P B 84The Late Period (664332 ) 84Egypt Under Achaemenid Rule 86 The 27th Dynasty 87 The 28th, 29th, and 30th Dynasties 88The Macedonian Conquest 89

The Ptolemaic Dynasty 90The Ptolemies (305145 ) 91Dynastic Strife and Decline (14530 ) 94Government and Conditions Under the Ptolemies 96 Administration 96 Economy 97 Religion 98 Culture 99 Alexandrian Museum 100

C 6: Rm BzE 102Egypt as a Province of Rome 102 Administration and Economy Under Rome 104 Society, Religion, and Culture 105Egypts Role in the Byzantine Empire 108 Byzantine Government of Egypt 111 The Advance of Christianity 111

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174

168

157C 7: E 114Nature and Signicance 114Sources and Limitations of Ancient and Modern

Knowledge 116King, Cosmos, and Society 117The Gods 119 Groupings of Deities 122 Myth 124The Cult 125Piety, Practical Religion, and Magic 126 Book of the Dead 128The World of the Dead 129Inuence on Other Religions 131 Mummication 132

C 8: E L W 133Egyptian Language 133

Egyptian Writing 134 Hieroglyphic Writing 134 Coptic Language 135 Ankh 140 Papyrus 144 Hieratic Script 145 Demotic Script 146 The Discovery and Decipherment of the

Rosetta Stone 147

C 9: E A A 149Predynastic Period 150Dynastic Egypt 150 Architecture 151 Sculpture 163 Relief Sculpture and Painting 167 Plastic Arts 170 Decorative Arts 172Greco-Roman Egypt 175

C 10: Em 178

A: S S 182G 197B 199I 201


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Id | 9

reeds could be fashioned into boats orrope. Without a doubt, the most histori-cally important use of papyrus was as awriting surface. To make this surface,Egyptians crushed the stems of the plant,dampened the layers they created fromthe strips thus obtained, and nally ham-mered and dried the result. About 3000 papyrus joined clay tablets as pre-ferred writing surfaces. Many documentswritten on papyrus (the root of the Englishwordpaper) are still in existence today.

Papyrus documents have providedmuch of what is known about ancient

Egypt, as have inscribed monuments, art-work, and various lists of kings. The mostimportant kings list is Manethos

Aegyptiaca (now lost), which oered thebasic chronological structure that mosthistorians work from today. Manetho, apriest who lived in the early 3rd century, divided Egyptian history, after uni-cation in 3100 , into dynasties, 30 ofwhich are recognized.

Ancient Egypt was a land ruled bykings, who were also known as pharaohs.The word pharaoh comes from theEgyptian term for great house, referringto the kings palace. Egyptians believedthat their leaders were god-kings whobecame full-edged gods after theirdeaths. The names of some 170 Egyptiankings are known.

The rst recorded pharaoh wasMenes, who ruled from about 3150 to

It can be said that the story of ancientEgypt begins with the Nile River.Settlements along the Nile existed atleast 2,000 years before Egypts rst rul-ing dynasty was founded about 3100 .The earliest settlers along the Nile werenomads and pastoralists who grew bar-ley on the fertile oodplain or shedand hunted. The Nile River basin servedas the stage for the evolution and decayof an advanced civilization. The riveritself enabled the descendants of theseseemingly unexceptional people tobuild a civilization that would tower

over the ancient world. This book helpsexplain how they did it and what itmeans for us today.

Early Egypt was divided geographi-cally and culturally into Upper Egyptand Lower Egypt. Upper Egypt con-sisted of the region south of the Niledelta. From these highlands the mightyNile owed northward. Lower Egypt wasmade up of the northern lowlands, wherethe Nile ended in a fan-shaped delta thatemptied into the Mediterranean Sea.Upland people tended to be erce andrugged, like the terrain that was theirhome. Lowland northerners were morelikely to be prosperous farmers.

Along the banks of the Nile grew thegrasslike aquatic plant known as papyrus.The bres from the stem of this versatile

plant were used to make cloth for sailsand clothing. Bundled together, papyrus

King Akhenaton and Queen Nefertiti worship the sun god Aton. Hulton Archive/Getty Images


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10 | Ancient Egypt: From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest

with Thutmose III, the young son borne toher husband by another wife, until sheproclaimed herself king and adopted fulltitles and regalia of a (male) pharaoh.Cleopatra came to the throne after herfather, then her brother, died. A strong andambitious ruler, she alternately soughtalliances with and waged war againstleaders of the Roman Empire. Yet despiteher adept leadership, Cleopatra is perhapsbest remembered for love aairs she con-ducted with Julius Caesar and the Romangeneral Mark Antony.

These women were notable excep-

tions in regnal matters. Egyptian leaderswere overwhelmingly male, and thethrone was traditionally passed down tomale heirs. By tradition, the eldest son ofthe pharaohs chief wife usually had thestrongest claim to succeed his father.However, other sonsand other malerelativescould be named pharaoh aswell. On occasion, a king might select asuccessor based on religious oracles.

Religion played an important role inancient Egypt. The polytheistic Egyptiansworshipped a wide array of gods and god-desses. Over the course of 3,000 years,new deities appeared and many old onesfaded in importance. Yet Egyptian reli-gion remained remarkably stable overthat time and pervaded daily life.

Egypts pantheon of gods and god-

desses can seem strange to modernsensibilities. For instance, Ptah, the cre-ator god, was believed to have made theworld from the thoughts in his head.The goddess Nut was believed to swallowRe, the sun god and the creator god, each

3125 . According to legend, Menesfounded the nations capital at Memphisand united Lower Egypt and UpperEgypt. Yet the archaeological evidencefor this early period is sketchy.Excavations have shown that up to twodozen rulers may have carried out theunication. One thing is clear: Egyptspower, stability, and unity in the ancientworld made it the rst true nation-state.

Perhaps the most recognizable of theancient Egyptian kings is Tutankhamen,a relatively minor leader in the overarch-ing history of Egyptian rulers. The Boy

King ascended to the throne in 1333 at a very young age and died when hewas just 19. He was thrust into the lime-light in 1922, when his burial site wasdiscovered by British archaeologistHoward Carter. The funerary chamberwas a treasure trove. The kings of ancientEgypt controlled enormous riches, muchof which was buried with them. The solidgold inner con found in Tutankhamenstomb would be worth millions of dollarstoday, for the gold alone. The wealth thataccompanied longer-lived kings to theirtombs must have been staggering.Unfortunately, this supposition cannotbe veried with much certainty becausemost of the other pharaohs tombs werelooted in ancient times by grave robbers.

Occasionally, women claimed Egypts

throne. The two most important of thesewomen were Hatshepsut (14731458 )and Cleopatra (5130 ). Hatsheput wasthe daughter of one king, Thutmose I,and the sister and wife of his successor,Thutmose II. For years she ruled jointly


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immeasurably with our understandingof Egypts civilization.

Writing was a major factor in central-izing the Egyptian state. There were twobasic types of writing. Hieroglyphs wereused mostly on monuments and for o-cial state occasions. It was the formalwriting system. More mundane commu-nications were handled by using hieratic,a cursive form of the language that looksto the casual observer somewhat likemodern Arabic.

The individuals who were largelyresponsible for keeping the machinery

of the state running were a highly edu-cated, literate group of scribes, who helda privileged position in society. Theywere responsible for assessing taxes,keeping legal records, and recordingroyal achievements. Training to becomea scribe started at an early age. Scribeswent to schools known as Houses of Life.Often scribes inherited their positionsfrom their fathers, although it was pos-sible for a literate commoner to rise tohigh oce.

Ancient Egypt was also notable forvast building projects. The Egyptiansused two main building materials: mudbrick and stone. Mud brick was usedprimarily for building cities. Many ofthose cities have been washed awayover time by the Nile, though Egypts

dry climate has preserved the remainsof some. On the other hand, most of thestone tombs and temples were built outof the Niles reach.

Easily the most recognizableof Egypts great buildings were the

evening. Each day, he traveled across thesky as the sun and each night he jour-neyed through the underworld. There hebattled against chaos and its allies.

Generally speaking, public religionfocused on two objects of devotion: theking and an array of gods. The king heldunique status between humanity and thegods. He was believed to commune withthe gods, and he constructed huge funer-ary monuments for his afterlife. The mainreligious task of the king was to retain thebenevolence of the gods. By doing this,he would stave o the disorder and chaos

seen in so many kingdoms outside Egypt.Early kings lived as absolute mon-

archs surrounded by small groups madeup mostly of family. Over time, the kingsbecame the centre of a more compli-cated government run by a core groupof a few hundred wealthy elite. Thesemen, in turn, controlled a few thousandlesser ocials. Together, these twogroups made up about 5 percent of earlypopulations.

Egyptians believed themselvesto be favoured by the gods. They alsobelieved in an afterlife. More importantto history, they believed that a bodymust remain intact to travel throughthe afterlife. So Egyptians becameexperts at the art of preserving deadbodies through mummication. Kings

especially took elaborate steps to makesure that their bodies were preservedand protected in imposing cons, sar-cophagi, tombs, and pyramids. Theseinstruments of immortality were builtto last. Their survival has helped

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The Egyptians ability to inspire awehas been long-lived. By the time theancient Greeks rst visited Egypt about500 , the pyramids were already thou-sands of years old. Egypts grandcivilization, however, was in its twilightyears. The invasion of Alexander the Greatin the 300s brought the Ptolemy kingsto power as Egypts nal leaders. ThenRomes defeat of Cleopatra in 30 brought the Ptolemy dynasty to an end,along with Egypts independence.Knowledge about Egyptian writing andculture began to fade.

Yet the inuence of ancient Egyptwas pervasive. Roman emperors builtEgyptian gardens in their palaces. Cultsbased on Egyptian gods and goddessesspread throughout the empire. The god-dess Isis, for example, was worshippedfrom England to Afghanistan. Later,medieval popes constructed obelisks thatmimicked those of the pharaohs.Medieval doctors ground up mummiesand fed them to patients in the mistakenbelief that these well-preserved bodieshad supernatural healing powers.Enlightenment philosophers tried tostudy Egyptian culture with the fewsources they had.

The doors of Egyptian history swungwide open again when Napoleon invadedEgypt in 1798. One of his soldiers discov-

ered the Rosetta Stone, which contained akings decree written in both hieroglyphsand ancient Greek. With this key, Frenchscholar Jean-Franois Champollion wasable to unlock the secrets of hieroglyphs

pyramids. Why these structures werebuilt remains something of a mystery, buttheir monumental scale was guaranteedto impress. The Great Pyramid of Khufuwas 481.4 feet (146.7 metres) high. Built inthe 2500s , it remained the worlds tall-est building until the late 19th century.Virtually all Egyptian pyramids wereconstructed early in the history of theOld Kingdom. Scholars speculate thatthe enormous amounts of money andmanpower required for their construc-tion were the chief reason that pyramidsfell out of favour. Funerary buildings built

thereafter were much smaller and poorerin construction.

Like the pyramids, Egypts templesjustly earned worldwide fame. Perhapsthe greatest was the Temple of Luxor,construction of which was begun byAmenhotep III in the 18th dynasty (in the1300s ). The Temple of Luxor con-tained most of the elements found in allof Egypts great temples. There was anapproach avenue lined with sphinxesthat led to a great double-towered pylon.Within the pylon was a courtyard leadingto a pillar-lled hall. Deep in the templewas a shrine to a deity. Outside the tem-ple was a lake or well to be used for thereligious rituals held there. All of this wasenclosed within a massive red brick wall.Ramses II (1200s )rightly seen as one

of Egypts greatest buildersis responsi-ble for the two temples at Abu Simbel,featuring four massive statues. They areamong the most impressive examples ofrock-cut architecture.


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that had eluded scholars for centuries.From this discovery has owed mostof what we know about the ancientEgyptians. Without it, scholars might stillbe guessing blindly about the meaning ofEgypts temples and tombs.

In the 19th century, Egyptian inu-ence became fashionable in design andthe arts. Jewelry, furniture, and an assort-ment of decorative objects and accentpieces were adorned with designs andimages that conjured thoughts of lifealong the Nile. Egyptian-themed (or atleast tinged) operas, plays, and novels

were a hit with the general public.It seemed that the more that was

revealed about ancient Egypt, themore the appetite for faux relics andrepresentations grew in America andthroughout Europe. The discoveryof King Tutankhamens tomb in theearly 20th century sparked yet anotherround of Egyptomania. Films featuring

mummies and compelling characterssuch as the ever-beguiling Cleopatraickered across the silver screen, whilemajor cities erected corporate buildingsthat borrowed heavily from the cleanlines of Egyptian design.

Interest in Egypt waned for a timeand was then revived in 1978, when thetreasures of Tutankhamens tomb wenton traveling display around the world.Another traveling exhibition was begunin 2005. King Tut again made news in2010 when scientists, using DNA analy-sis and radiography, revealed that the

young pharaoh had most likely died frommalaria in combination with degenera-tive bone disease, thus solving a mysterythat had intrigued the masses fordecades.

Perhaps interest in Egypt will nevertruly be a thing of the past. That would bea fate betting ancient Egypts status asone of the worlds greatest civilizations.


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CAPTER 1

Ancient Egyptian civilization developed in northeasternAfrica in the 3rd millennium . Its many achievements,

preserved in its art and monuments, hold a fascination thatcontinues to grow as archaeological nds expose its secrets.The term ancient Egypt traditionally refers to northeasternAfrica from its prehistory up to the Islamic conquest in the7th century .

ANCIENT EGPTIAN CIILIATION

Ancient Egypt can be thought of as an oasis in the desert ofnortheastern Africa, dependent on the annual inundationof the Nile River to support its agricultural population. Thecountrys chief wealth came from the fertile oodplain ofthe Nile valley, where the river ows between bands of lime-stone hills, and the Nile delta, in which it fans into severalbranches north of present-day Cairo. Between the oodplainand the hills is a variable band of low desert that supporteda certain amount of game. The Nile was Egypts sole trans-

portation artery.

LIE IN ANCIENT EGPT

The First Cataract of the Nile at Aswn, where the riverbedis turned into rapids by a belt of granite, was the countrys

T S A E


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port of Byblos (present-day Jbail). Egyptneeded few imports to maintain basicstandards of living, but good timber wasessential and not available within thecountry, so it usually was obtained fromLebanon. Minerals such as obsidian andlapis lazuli were imported from as faraeld as Anatolia and Afghanistan.

Agriculture centred on the cultiva-tion of cereal crops, chiey emmer wheat(Triticum dicoccum) and barley (Hordeumvulgare). The fertility of the land and gen-eral predictability of the inundationensured very high productivity from a

single annual crop. This productivitymade it possible to store large surplusesagainst crop failures and also formed thechief basis of Egyptian wealth, which was,until the creation of the large empires ofthe 1st millennium , the greatest of anystate in the ancient Middle East.

Basin irrigation was achieved by sim-ple means, and multiple cropping wasnot feasible until much later times, exceptperhaps in the lakeside area of Al-Fayym.As the river deposited alluvial silt, raisingthe level of the oodplain, and land wasreclaimed from marsh, the area availablefor cultivation in the Nile valley and deltaincreased, while pastoralism declinedslowly. In addition to grain crops, fruitand vegetables were important, the latterbeing irrigated year-round in small plots;

sh was also vital to the diet. Papyrus,which grew abundantly in marshes, wasgathered wild and in later times was culti-vated. It may have been used as a foodcrop, and it certainly was used to make

only well-dened boundary within a pop-ulated area. To the south lay the far lesshospitable area of Nubia, in which theriver owed through low sandstone hillsthat in most regions left only a very nar-row strip of cultivable land. Nubia wassignicant for Egypts periodic southwardexpansion and for access to productsfrom farther south. West of the Nile wasthe arid Sahara, broken by a chain ofoases some 125 to 185 miles (200 to 300kilometres) from the river and lacking inall other resources except for a few miner-als. The eastern desert, between the Nile

and the Red Sea, was more important, forit supported a small nomadic populationand desert game, contained numerousmineral deposits, including gold, and wasthe route to the Red Sea.

To the northeast was the Isthmusof Suez. It oered the principal routefor contact with Sinai, from which cameturquoise and possibly copper, andwith southwestern Asia, Egypts mostimportant area of cultural interaction,from which were received stimuli fortechnical development and cultivarsfor crops. Immigrants and ultimatelyinvaders crossed the isthmus into Egypt,attracted by the countrys stability andprosperity. From the late 2nd millen-nium onward, numerous attacks weremade by land and sea along the eastern

Mediterranean coast.At rst, relatively little cultural con-

tact came by way of the MediterraneanSea, but from an early date Egypt main-tained trading relations with the Lebanese


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rope, matting, and sandals. Above all, itprovided the characteristic Egyptianwriting material, which, with cereals, wasthe countrys chief export in Late periodEgyptian and then Greco-Roman times.

Cattle may have been domesticatedin northeastern Africa. The Egyptianskept many as draft animals and for theirvarious products, showing some of theinterest in breeds and individuals that isfound to this day in the Sudan and east-ern Africa. The donkey, which was theprincipal transport animal (the cameldid not become common until Roman

times), was probably domesticated inthe region. The native Egyptian breed ofsheep became extinct in the 2nd millen-nium and was replaced by an Asiaticbreed. Sheep were primarily a source ofmeat; their wool was rarely used. Goatswere more numerous than sheep. Pigswere also raised and eaten. Ducks andgeese were kept for food, and many of thevast numbers of wild and migratory birdsfound in Egypt were hunted and trapped.Desert game, principally various speciesof antelope and ibex, were hunted bythe elite; it was a royal privilege to huntlions and wild cattle. Pets included dogs,which were also used for hunting, cats(domesticated in Egypt), and monkeys.In addition, the Egyptians had a greatinterest in, and knowledge of, most spe-

cies of mammals, birds, reptiles, and shin their environment.

Most Egyptians were probablydescended from settlers who moved tothe Nile valley in prehistoric times, with

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population increase coming throughnatural fertility. In various periods therewere immigrants from Nubia, Libya, andespecially the Middle East. They werehistorically signicant and also mayhave contributed to population growth,but their numbers are unknown. Mostpeople lived in villages and towns in theNile valley and delta. Dwellings werenormally built of mud brick and havelong since disappeared beneath the ris-ing water table or beneath modern townsites, thereby obliterating evidence forsettlement patterns. In antiquity, as now,

the most favoured location of settle-ments was on slightly raised groundnear the riverbank, where transport andwater were easily available and oodingwas unlikely. Until the 1st millennium, Egypt was not urbanized to the sameextent as Mesopotamia. Instead, a fewcentres, notably Memphis and Thebes,attracted population and particularly theelite, while the rest of the people were rel-atively evenly spread over the land. Thesize of the population has been estimatedas having risen from 1 to 1.5 million in the3rd millennium to perhaps twice thatnumber in the late 2nd millennium and1st millennium . (Much higher levelsof population were reached in Greco-Roman times.)

Nearly all of the people were engaged

in agriculture and were probably tied tothe land. In theory all the land belongedto the king, although in practice those liv-ing on it could not easily be removed, andsome categories of land could be bought


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and sold. Land was assigned to high o-cials to provide them with an income, andmost tracts required payment of substan-tial dues to the state, which had a stronginterest in keeping the land in agricul-tural use. Abandoned land was takenback into state ownership and reassignedfor cultivation. The people who lived onand worked the land were not free toleave and were obliged to work it, butthey were not slaves. Most paid a propor-tion of their produce to major ocials.Free citizens who worked the land ontheir own behalf did emerge. Terms

applied to them tended originally to referto poor people, but these agriculturalistswere probably not poor.

Slavery was never common, beingrestricted to captives and foreigners or topeople who were forced by poverty ordebt to sell themselves into service.Slaves sometimes even married membersof their owners families, so that in thelong term those belonging to householdstended to be assimilated into free society.In the New Kingdom (from about 1539 to1075 ), large numbers of captive slaveswere acquired by major state institutionsor incorporated into the army. Punitivetreatment of foreign slaves or of nativefugitives from their obligations includedforced labour, exile (in, for example, theoases of the western desert), or compul-

sory enlistment in dangerous miningexpeditions. Even nonpunitive employ-ment such as quarrying in the desert washazardous. The ocial record of oneexpedition shows a mortality rate of morethan 10 percent.

Just as the Egyptians optimized agri-cultural production with simple means,their crafts and techniques, many ofwhich originally came from Asia, wereraised to extraordinary levels of perfec-tion. The Egyptians most strikingtechnical achievement, massive stonebuilding, also exploited the potential of acentralized state to mobilize a hugelabour force, which was made availableby ecient agricultural practices. Someof the technical and organizational skillsinvolved were remarkable. The construc-tion of the great pyramids of the 4th

dynasty (c. 2575c. 2465 ) has yet to befully explained and would be a majorchallenge to this day. This expenditure ofskill contrasts with sparse evidence of anessentially neolithic way of living for therural population of the time, while the useof int tools persisted even in urban envi-ronments at least until the late 2ndmillennium . Metal was correspond-ingly scarce, much of it being used forprestige rather than everyday purposes.

In urban and elite contexts, theEgyptian ideal was the nuclear family,but, on the land and even within thecentral ruling group, there is evidencefor extended families. Egyptians weremonogamous, and the choice of partnersin marriage, for which no formal cere-mony or legal sanction is known, did not

follow a set pattern. Consanguineousmarriage was not practiced during theDynastic period, except for the occa-sional marriage of a brother and sisterwithin the royal family, and that practicemay have been open only to kings or


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and humanity (by which was understoodchiey the Egyptians). Of these groups,only the king was single, and hence hewas individually more prominent thanany of the others. A text that summarizesthe kings role states that he is on earthfor ever and ever, judging humankindand propitiating the gods, and settingorder [maat, a central concept] in placeof disorder. He gives oerings to the godsand mortuary oerings to the spirits [theblessed dead]. The king was imbuedwith divine essence, but not in any simpleor unqualied sense. His divinity accrued

to him from his oce and was rearmedthrough rituals, but it was vastly inferiorto that of major gods. He was god ratherthan human by virtue of his potential,which was immeasurably greater thanthat of any human being. To humanity,he manifested the gods on earth, a con-ception that was elaborated in a complexweb of metaphor and doctrine.

Less directly, he represented human-ity to the gods. The text quoted abovealso gives great prominence to the dead,who were the object of a cult for the livingand who could intervene in humanaairs; in many periods the chief visibleexpenditure and focus of display of non-royal individuals, as of the king, was onprovision for the tomb and the next world.Egyptian kings are commonly called pha-

raohs, following the usage of the HebrewBible (Old Testament). The term pha-raoh, however, is derived from theEgyptian per aa (great estate) anddates to the designation of the royal pal-ace as an institution. This term for palace

heirs to the throne. Divorce was in the-ory easy, but it was costly. Women had alegal status only marginally inferior tothat of men. They could own and dis-pose of property in their own right, andthey could initiate divorce and otherlegal proceedings. They hardly ever heldadministrative oce but increasinglywere involved in religious cults aspriestesses or chantresses. Marriedwomen held the title mistress of thehouse, the precise signicance of whichis unknown. Lower down the social scale,they probably worked on the land as well

as in the house.The uneven distribution of wealth,

labour, and technology was related to theonly partly urban character of society,especially in the 3rd millennium . Thecountrys resources were not fed intonumerous provincial towns but insteadwere concentrated to great eect aroundthe capitalitself a dispersed string ofsettlements rather than a cityandfocused on the central gure in society,the king. In the 3rd and early 2nd millen-nia, the elite ideal, expressed in thedecoration of private tombs, was mano-rial and rural. Not until much later didEgyptians develop a more pronouncedlyurban character.

TE KING AND IDEOLOG:

ADMINISTRATION, ART,AND WRITING

In cosmogonical terms, Egyptian soci-ety consisted of a descending hierarchyof the gods, the king, the blessed dead,

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was used increasingly from about 1400 as a way of referring to the living king;in earlier times it was rare.

Rules of succession to the kingshipare poorly understood. The common con-ception that the heir to the throne had tomarry his predecessors oldest daughterhas been disproved; kingship did notpass through the female line. The choiceof queen seems to have been free. Oftenthe queen was a close relative of the king,but she also might be unrelated to him. Inthe New Kingdom, for which evidence isabundant, each king had a queen with

distinctive titles, as well as a number ofminor wives.

Sons of the chief queen seem tohave been the preferred successorsto the throne, but other sons could alsobecome king. In many cases the succes-sor was the eldest (surviving) son, andsuch a pattern of inheritance agrees withmore general Egyptian values, but oftenhe was some other relative or was com-pletely unrelated. New Kingdom textsdescribe, after the event, how kings wereappointed heirs either by their predeces-sors or by divine oracles, and such mayhave been the pattern when there wasno clear successor. Dissent and conictare suppressed from public sources.From the Late period (664332 ),when sources are more diverse and pat-

terns less rigid, numerous usurpationsand interruptions to the successionare known. They probably had manyforerunners.

The kings position changed gradu-ally from that of an absolute monarch at

the centre of a small ruling group madeup mostly of his kin to that of the head ofa bureaucratic statein which his rulewas still absolutebased on ocehold-ing and, in theory, on free competitionand merit. By the 5th dynasty, xed insti-tutions had been added to the force oftradition and the regulation of personalcontact as brakes on autocracy, but thecharismatic and superhuman power ofthe king remained vital.

The elite of administrative oce-holders received their positions andcommissions from the king, whose gen-

eral role as judge over humanity they putinto eect. They commemorated theirown justice and concern for others, espe-cially their inferiors, and recorded theirown exploits and ideal conduct of lifein inscriptions for others to see. Thus,the position of the elite was armed byreference to the king, to their prestigeamong their peers, and to their conducttoward their subordinates, justifying tosome extent the fact that theyand stillmore the kingappropriated much of thecountrys production.

These attitudes and their potentialdissemination through society counter-balanced inequality, but how far theywere accepted cannot be known. The coregroup of wealthy oceholders numberedat most a few hundred, and the adminis-

trative class of minor ocials and scribes,most of whom could not aord to leavememorials or inscriptions, perhaps 5,000.With their dependents, these two groupsformed perhaps 5 percent of the earlypopulation. Monuments and inscriptions


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commemorated no more than one in athousand people.

According to royal ideology, the kingappointed the elite on the basis of merit,and in ancient conditions of high mortal-ity the elite had to be open to recruitsfrom outside. There was, however, also anideal that a son should succeed his father.In periods of weak central control thisprinciple predominated, and in the Lateperiod the whole society became morerigid and stratied.

Writing was a major instrument inthe centralization of the Egyptian state

and its self-presentation. The two basictypes of writinghieroglyphs, whichwere used for monuments and display,and the cursive form known as hieraticwere invented at much the same time inlate predynastic Egypt (c. 3000 ).Writing was chiey used for administra-tion, and until about 2650 nocontinuous texts are preserved; the onlyextant literary texts written before the

early Middle Kingdom (c. 1950 ) seemto have been lists of important traditionalinformation and possibly medical trea-tises. The use and potential of writingwere restricted both by the rate of liter-acy, which was probably well below 1percent, and by expectations of what writ-ing might do.

Hieroglyphic writing was publiclyidentied with Egypt. Perhaps because ofthis association with a single powerfulstate, its language, and its culture,Egyptian writing was seldom adapted towrite other languages; in this it contrasts

with the cuneiform script of the relativelyuncentralized, multilingual Mesopotamia.Nonetheless, Egyptian hieroglyphs prob-ably served in the middle of the 2ndmillennium as the model from whichthe alphabet, ultimately the most wide-spread of all writing systems, evolved.

The dominant visible legacy ofancient Egypt is in works of architectureand representational art. Until the Middle

Egyptian hieroglyphic numerals. Encyclopia Britannica, Inc.

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and can be seen in most works of Egyptianart. In content, these are hierarchicallyordered so that the most important g-ures, the gods and the king, are showntogether, while before the New Kingdomgods seldom occur in the same context ashumanity. The decoration of a nonroyaltomb characteristically shows the tombsowner with his subordinates, who admin-ister his land and present him with itsproduce. The tomb owner is also typicallydepicted hunting in the marshes, a favou-rite pastime of the elite that mayadditionally symbolize passage into the

next world. The king and the gods areabsent in nonroyal tombs, and, until theNew Kingdom, overtly religious matter isrestricted to rare scenes of mortuary ritu-als and journeys and to textual formulas.Temple reliefs, in which king and godsoccur freely, show the king defeating hisenemies, hunting, and especially oeringto the gods, who in turn confer benetsupon him. Human beings are present atmost as minor gures supporting theking. On both royal and nonroyal monu-ments, an ideal world is represented inwhich all are beautiful and everythinggoes well; only minor gures may havephysical imperfections.

This artistic presentation of valuesoriginated at the same time as writingbut before the latter could record contin-

uous texts or complex statements. Someof the earliest continuous texts of the 4thand 5th dynasties show an awareness ofan ideal past that the present could onlyaspire to emulate. A few biographies of

Kingdom, most of these were mortuary,namely royal tomb complexes, includingpyramids and mortuary temples, and pri-vate tombs. There were also templesdedicated to the cult of the gods through-out the country, but most of these weremodest structures. From the beginning ofthe New Kingdom, temples of the godsbecame the principal monuments. Royalpalaces and private houses, which arevery little known, were less important.

Temples and tombs were ideallyexecuted in stone with relief decorationon their walls and were lled with stone

and wooden statuary, inscribed and dec-orated stelae (freestanding small stonemonuments), and, in their inner areas,composite works of art in precious mate-rials. The design of the monuments andtheir decoration dates in essence to thebeginning of the historical period andpresents an ideal, sanctied cosmos.Little in it is related to the everydayworld, and, except in palaces, works of artmay have been rare outside temples andtombs. Decoration may record real his-torical events, rituals, or the ocial titlesand careers of individuals, but its primesignicance is the more general assertionof values, and the information presentedmust be evaluated for its plausibility andcompared with other evidence. Someof the events depicted in relief on royal

monuments were certainly iconic ratherthan historically factual.

The highly distinctive Egyptianmethod of rendering nature and artisticstyle was also a creation of early times


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country by the beginning of the MiddleKingdom. These precise tasks requiredboth knowledge of astronomy and highlyingenious techniques, but they appar-ently were achieved with little theoreticalanalysis.

Whereas in the earliest periods Egyptseems to have been administered almostas the personal estate of the king, by thecentral Old Kingdom it had been dividedinto about 35 nomes, or provinces, eachwith its own ocials. Administrationwas concentrated at the capital, wheremost of the central elite lived and died.

In the nonmonetary Egyptian economy,its essential functions were the col-lection, storage, and redistribution ofproduce; the drafting and organizationof manpower for specialized labour,probably including irrigation and oodprotection works, and major state proj-ects; and the supervision of legal matters.Administration and law were not fullydistinct, and both depended ultimatelyon the king. The settlement of disputeswas in part an administrative task, forwhich the chief guiding criterion wasprecedent, while contractual relationswere regulated by the use of standard for-mulas. State and temple both partook inredistribution and held massive reservesof grain; temples were economic as wellas religious institutions. In periods of

decentralization similar functions wereexercised by local grandees. Markets hadonly a minor role, and craftsmen wereemployees who normally traded onlywhat they produced in their free time.

ocials allude to strife, but more-nuanceddiscussion occurs rst in literary texts ofthe Middle Kingdom. The texts consistof stories, dialogues, lamentations, andespecially instructions on how to live agood life, and they supply a rich com-mentary on the more one-dimensionalrhetoric of public inscriptions. Literaryworks were written in all the main laterphases of the Egyptian languageMiddleEgyptian; the classical form of theMiddle and New kingdoms that contin-ued in copies and inscriptions intoRoman times; Late Egyptian, from the

19th dynasty to about 700 ; andthe demotic script from the 4th century to the 3rd century but many of thenest and most complex are amongthe earliest.

Literary works also included treatiseson mathematics, astronomy, medicine,and magic, as well as various religioustexts and canonical lists that classiedthe categories of creation (probably theearliest genre, dating back to the begin-ning of the Old Kingdom, c. 2575 , oreven a little earlier). Among these texts,little is truly systematic, a notable excep-tion being a medical treatise on wounds.The absence of systematic inquiry con-trasts with Egyptian practical expertisein such elds as surveying, which wasused both for orienting and planning

buildings to remarkably ne tolerancesand for the regular division of elds afterthe annual inundation of the Nile. TheEgyptians also had surveyed and estab-lished the dimensions of their entire

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temple were so closely interconnectedthat there was no real tension betweenthem before the late New Kingdom.

SORCES, CALENDARS, ANDCRONOLOG

For all but the last century of Egyptian pre-history, whose neolithic and later phasesare normally termed predynastic, evi-dence is exclusively archaeological. Laternative sources have only mythical allu-sions to such remote times. The Dynasticperiod of native Egyptian rulers is gener-

ally divided into 30 dynasties, followingthe Aegyptiaca of the Greco-Egyptianwriter Manetho of Sebennytos (early3rd century ), excerpts of which arepreserved in the works of later writers.Manetho apparently organized his dynas-ties by the capital cities from which theyruled, but several of his divisions alsoreect political or dynastic changesthatis, changes of the party holding power. Hegave the lengths of reign of kings or ofentire dynasties and grouped the dynas-ties into several periods, but, because oftextual corruption and a tendency towardination, Manethos gures cannot beused to reconstruct chronology withoutsupporting evidence and analysis.

Manethos prime sources were earlierEgyptian king lists, the organization of

which he imitated. The most signicantpreserved example of a king list is theTurin Papyrus (Turin Canon), a fragmen-tary document in the Egyptian Museumin Turin, Italy, which originally listed allkings of the 1st through the 17th dynasty,

The wealthiest ocials escaped this pat-tern to some extent by receiving theirincome in the form of land and maintain-ing large establishments that includedtheir own specialized workers.

The essential medium of administra-tion was writing, reinforced by personalauthority over the nonliterate 99 percent ofthe population. Texts exhorting the youngto be scribes emphasize that the scribecommanded while the rest did the work.Most ocials (almost all of whom weremen) held several oces and accumu-lated more as they progressed up a

complex ranked hierarchy, at the top ofwhich was the vizier, the chief adminis-trator and judge. The vizier reported tothe king, who in theory retained certainpowers, such as authority to invoke thedeath penalty, absolutely.

Before the Middle Kingdom, the civiland the military were not sharply dis-tinguished. Military forces consisted oflocal militias under their own ocialsand included foreigners, and nonmilitaryexpeditions to extract minerals from thedesert or to transport heavy loads throughthe country were organized in similarfashion. Until the New Kingdom therewas no separate priesthood. Holders ofcivil oce also had priestly titles, andpriests had civil titles. Often priesthoodswere sinecures: their chief signicance

was the income they brought. Thesame was true of the minor civil titlesaccumulated by high ocials. At a lowerlevel, minor priesthoods were held on arotating basis by laymen who servedevery fourth month in temples. State and


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were assigned according to biennial cat-tle censuses numbered through eachkings reign. Fragments of such lists arepreserved on the Palermo Stone, aninscribed piece of basalt (at the RegionalMuseum of Archaeology in Palermo,Italy), and related pieces in the CairoMuseum and University College London.These are probably all parts of a singlecopy of an original document of the 5thdynasty.

The Egyptians did not date by eraslonger than the reign of a single king,so a historical framework must be cre-

ated from totals of reign lengths, whichare then related to astronomical data thatmay allow whole periods to be xed pre-cisely. This is done through referencesto astronomical events and correla-tions with the three calendars in use inEgyptian antiquity. All dating was by acivil calendar, derived from the lunar cal-endar, which was introduced in the rsthalf of the 3rd millennium . The civilyear had 365 days and started in principlewhen Sirius, or the Dog Staralso knownin Greek as Sothis (Ancient Egyptian:Sopdet)became visible above the hori-zon after a period of absence, which atthat time occurred some weeks beforethe Nile began to rise for the inundation.Every 4 years the civil year advanced oneday in relation to the solar year (with 365

, and after a cycle of about 1,460 yearsit would again agree with the solar calen-dar. Religious ceremonies were organizedaccording to two lunar calendars that hadmonths of 29 or 30 days, with extra, inter-calary months every three years or so.

preceded by a mythical dynasty of godsand one of the spirits, followers of Horus.Like Manethos later work, the Turin doc-ument gave reign lengths for individualkings, as well as totals for some dynastiesand longer multidynastic periods.

In early periods the kings years ofreign were not consecutively numberedbut were named for salient events, andlists were made of the names. More-extensive details were added to the listsfor the 4th and 5th dynasties, when dates

The Palermo Stone, rst side. Courtesy of theRegional Museum of Archaeology, Palermo

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however, yield results encouraginglyclose to dates computed in the mannerdescribed above.

King lists and astronomy give only achronological framework. A vast range ofarchaeological and inscriptional sourcesfor Egyptian history survive, but none ofthem were produced with the interpreta-tion of history in mind. No consistentpolitical history of ancient Egypt can bewritten. The evidence is very unevenlydistributed. There are gaps of manydecades; and in the 3rd millennium nocontinuous royal text recording historical

events was inscribed. Private biographi-cal inscriptions of all periods from the 5thdynasty (c. 2465c. 2325 ) to the Romanconquest (30 ) record individualinvolvement in events but are seldomconcerned with their general signi-cance. Royal inscriptions from the 12thdynasty (19381756 ) to Ptolemaictimes aim to present a kings actionsaccording to an overall conception ofhistory, in which he is the re-creator ofthe order of the world and the guarantorof its continued stability or its expansion.The goal of his action is to serve nothumanity but the gods, while nonroyalindividuals may relate their own suc-cesses to the king in the rst instance andsometimes to the gods.

Only in the decentralized intermedi-

ate periods did the nonroyal recountinternal strife. Kings did not mention dis-sent in their texts unless it came at thebeginning of a reign or a phase of actionand was quickly and triumphantly over-come in a rearmation of order. Such a

Five mentions of the rising of Sirius(generally known as Sothic dates) arepreserved in texts from the 3rd to the1st millennium, but by themselvesthese references cannot yield an abso-lute chronology. Such a chronologycan be computed from larger numbersof lunar dates and cross-checked fromsolutions for the observations of Sirius.Various chronologies are in use, how-ever, diering by up to 40 years for the2nd millennium and by more thana century for the beginning of the 1stdynasty. The chronologies oered in

most publications up to 1985 have beenthrown into some doubt for the Middleand New kingdoms by a restudy of theevidence for the Sothic and especiallythe lunar dates. For the 1st millennium,dates in the Third Intermediate periodare approximate; a supposed xed yearof 945 , based on links with the HebrewBible, turns out to be variable by a num-ber of years. Late period dates (664332) are almost completely xed. Beforethe 12th dynasty, plausible dates for the11th can be computed backward, but forearlier times dates are approximate. Atotal of 955 years for the 1st through the8th dynasty in the Turin Canon has beenused to assign a date of about 3100 forthe beginning of the 1st dynasty, but thisrequires excessive average reign lengths,

and an estimate of 2925 is preferable.Radiocarbon and other scientic datingof samples from Egyptian sites have notimproved on, or convincingly contested,computed dates. More-recent work onradiocarbon dates from Egypt does,


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schema often dominates the factual con-tent of texts, and it creates a strong biastoward recording foreign aairs, becausein ocial ideology there is no internaldissent after the initial turmoil is over.History is as much a ritual as a processof events. As a ritual, its protagonists areroyal and divine. Only in the Late perioddid these conventions weaken signi-cantly. Even then, they were retained infull for temple reliefs, where they kepttheir vitality into Roman times.

Despite this idealization, theEgyptians were well aware of history, as

is clear from their king lists. They dividedthe past into periods comparable to thoseused by Egyptologists and evaluated therulers not only as the founders of epochsbut also in terms of their salient exploitsor, especially in folklore, their bad quali-ties. The Demotic Chronicle, a text of thePtolemaic period, purports to foretellthe bad end that would befall numerousLate period kings as divine retributionfor their wicked actions.

EGPTOLOG: TE RECOER

AND STD OANCIENT EGPT

After the Arab conquest ( 641), only theChristian Egyptians, the Copts, kept alivethe ancient language, written in Greek

characters. In Europe the Coptic textstaken from Egypt during the Renaissanceawakened interest in the Egyptian lan-guage. Up to this time, views of Egyptwere dominated by the classical traditionthat it was the land of ancient wisdom.

This wisdom was thought to inhere in thehieroglyphic script, which was believedto impart profound symbolic ideas, notas it in fact doesthe sounds and wordsof texts. Between the 15th and 18th cen-turies, Egypt had a minor but signicantposition in general views of antiquity,and its monuments gradually becamebetter known through the work of schol-ars in Europe and travelers in the countryitself; the nest publications of the lat-ter were by Richard Pococke, FrederikLudwig Norden, and Carsten Niebuhr,all of whose works in the 18th century

helped to stimulate an Egyptian revivalin European art and architecture. Coptic,the Christian successor of the ancientEgyptian language, was studied fromthe 17th century, notably by AthanasiusKircher, for its potential to provide thekey to Egyptian.

Napoleon Is expedition to and short-lived conquest of Egypt in 1798 was theculmination of 18th-century interest inthe East. The expedition was accompa-nied by a team of scholars who recordedthe ancient and contemporary coun-try, issuing in 180928 the Descriptionde lgypte, the most comprehensivestudy to be made before the decipher-ment of the hieroglyphic script. Therenowned Rosetta Stone, which bearsa decree of Ptolemy V Epiphanes in

hieroglyphs, demotic script, and Greekalphabetic characters, was discoveredduring the expedition. It was ceded tothe British after the French capitula-tion in Egypt and became the propertyof the British Museum in London. This

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document greatly assisted the decipher-ment, accomplished by Jean-FranoisChampollion in 1822.

The Egyptian language revealedby the decipherment and decades ofsubsequent study is a member of theAfro-Asiatic language family. Egyptian isclosest to the familys Semitic branch butis distinctive in many respects. Duringseveral millennia it changed greatly. Thescript does not write vowels, and becauseGreek forms for royal names were knownfrom Manetho long before the Egyptianforms became available, those used

to this day are a mixture of Greek andEgyptian.

In the rst half of the 19th cen-tury, vast numbers of antiquities wereexported from Egypt, forming thenucleus of collections in many majormuseums. These were removed ratherthan excavated, inicting, togetherwith the economic development of thecountry, colossal damage on ancientsites. At the same time, many travelersand scholars visited the country andrecorded the monuments. The mostimportant, and remarkably accurate,record was produced by the Prussianexpedition led by Karl Richard Lepsius,in 184245, which explored sites as farsouth as the central Sudan.

In the mid-19th century, Egyptology

now dened as the study of pharaonicEgypt, spanning the period c. 4500 to 641 (the time of the Arab conquest)developed as a subject in France and inPrussia. The Antiquities Service and amuseum of Egyptian antiquities were

established in Egypt by the FrenchEgyptologist Auguste Mariette, a greatexcavator who attempted to preservesites from destruction, and the PrussianHeinrich Brugsch, who made great prog-ress in the interpretation of texts of manyperiods and published the rst majorEgyptian dictionary. In 1880 Flinders(later Sir Flinders) Petrie began morethan 40 years of methodical excavation,which created an archaeological frame-work for all the chief periods of Egyptianculture except for remote prehistory.Petrie was the initiator of much in

archaeological method, but he was latersurpassed by George Andrew Reisner,who excavated for American institutionsfrom 1899 to 1937. The greatest late 19th-century Egyptologist was Adolf Erman ofBerlin, who put the understanding of theEgyptian language on a sound basis andwrote general works that for the rst timeorganized what was known about the ear-lier periods.

Complete facsimile copies ofEgyptian monuments have been pub-lished since the 1890s, providing aseparate record that becomes morevital as the originals decay. The pioneerof this scientic epigraphy was JamesHenry Breasted of the Oriental Instituteof the University of Chicago, who beganhis work in 1905 and shortly thereaf-

ter was joined by others. He startedthe Epigraphic Survey in 1924 to makeaccurate copies of the inscriptions onmonuments, which are subject to dete-rioration from exposure to the elements,and to then publish these records. The


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Howard Carter. Encyclopia Britannica, Inc.

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Excavation and survey of great impor-tance have continued in many places. Forexample, at Saqqrah, part of the necrop-olis of the ancient city of Memphis, newareas of the Sarapeum have been uncov-ered with rich nds, and a major NewKingdom necropolis is being thoroughlyexplored. The site of ancient Memphisitself has been systematically surveyed;its position in relation to the ancientcourse of the Nile has been established;and urban occupation areas have beenstudied in detail for the rst time. Morerecently, archaeologists in 200910 dis-

covered in Alexandria the remains of atemple dedicated to Bastet, a goddess inthe shape of a cat.

Egyptology, it should be noted, isprimarily an interpretive subject. Therehave been outstanding contributionsfor example in art, for which HeinrichSchfer established the principles of therendering of nature, and in language.New light has been cast on texts, themajority of which are written in a sim-ple metre that can serve as the basisof sophisticated literary works. Thephysical environment, social structure,kingship, and religion are other elds inwhich great advances have been made,while the reconstruction of the outlineof history is constantly being improvedin detail.

groups current project, which began dur-ing the 199091 season, is a record of thetemple of Amon in Madnat Habu.

In the rst half of the 20th century,some outstanding archaeological dis-coveries were made. Howard Carteruncovered the tomb of Tutankhamenin 1922, Pierre Montet found the tombsof 21st22nd-dynasty kings at Tanisin 193944, and W.B. Emery and L.P.Kirwan found tombs of the Ballnahculture (the 4th through the 6th century) in Nubia in 193134. The last of thesewas part of the second survey of Lower

Nubia in 192934, which preceded thesecond raising of the Aswn Dam. Thiswas followed in the late 1950s and 60sby an international campaign to exca-vate and record sites in Egyptian andSudanese Nubia before the completionof the Aswn High Dam in 1970. LowerNubia is now one of the most thoroughlyexplored archaeological regions of theworld. Most of its many temples havebeen moved, either to higher groundnearby, as happened to Abu Simbeland Philae, or to quite dierent places,including various foreign museums. Thecampaign also had the welcome conse-quence of introducing a wide range ofarchaeological expertise to Egypt, sothat standards of excavation and record-ing in the country have risen greatly.


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T E P

CAPTER 2

The peoples of predynastic Egypt were the successors ofthe Paleolithic inhabitants of northeastern Africa, whohad spread over much of its area. During wet phases they hadleft remains in regions as inhospitable as the Great Sand Sea.The nal desiccation of the Sahara was not complete until theend of the 3rd millennium . Over thousands of years peo-ple must have migrated from there to the Nile valley, theenvironment of which improved as the region dried out. Inthis process the decisive change from the nomadic hunter-gatherer way of life of Paleolithic times to settled agriculturehas not so far been identied.

Scholars do know that some time after 5000 the raisingof crops was introduced, probably on a horticultural scale, insmall local cultures that seem to have penetrated southwardthrough Egypt into the oases and the Sudan. Several of thebasic food plants that were grown are native to the MiddleEast, so the new techniques probably spread from there. Nolarge-scale migration need have been involved, and the cul-tures were at rst largely self-contained. The preservedevidence for them is unrepresentative because it comes fromthe low desert, where relatively few people lived. As was the

case later, most people probably settled in the valley and delta.

PREDNASTIC EGPT

The earliest known Neolithic cultures in Egypt have beenfound at Marimda Ban Salma, on the southwestern edge of


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Second Cataract area, and north ofKhartoum. Some of these are as early asthe Egyptian ones, while others over-lapped with the succeeding Egyptianpredynastic cultures.

In Upper Egypt, between Asyt andLuxor (Al-Uqsur), have been found theTasian culture (named for Dayr Ts)and the Badarian culture (named forAl-Badr); these date from the late 5thmillennium . Most of the evidence forthem comes from cemeteries, where theburials included ne black-topped redpottery, ornaments, some copper objects,

and glazed steatite beads. The most char-acteristic predynastic luxury objects,slate palettes for grinding cosmetics,occur for the rst time in this period.The burials show little dierentiation ofwealth and status and seem to belong toa peasant culture without central politicalorganization.

Probably contemporary with bothpredynastic and dynastic times are thou-sands of rock drawings of a wide range ofmotifs, including boats, found through-out the Eastern Desert, in Lower Nubia,and as far west as Mount Uwaynt, whichstands near modern Egypts borders withLibya and the Sudan in the southwest.The drawings show that nomads werecommon throughout the desert, prob-ably to the late 3rd millennium , but

they cannot be dated precisely. They mayall have been produced by nomads, orinhabitants of the Nile valley may oftenhave penetrated the desert and madedrawings.

the delta, and farther to the southwest, inAl-Fayym. The site at Marimda BanSalma, which dates to the 6th5th mil-lennium , gives evidence of settlementand shows that cereals were grown. InAl-Fayym, where evidence dates to the5th millennium , the settlements werenear the shore of Lake Qrn, and the set-tlers engaged in shing. Marimda is avery large site that was occupied formany centuries. The inhabitants lived inlightly built huts; they may have buriedtheir dead within their houses, but areaswhere burials have been found may not

have been occupied by dwellings at thesame time. Pottery was used in both cul-tures. In addition to these EgyptianNeolithic cultures, others have beenidentied in the Western Desert, in the

Inset of the Nile delta.


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Naqdah I, named for the major siteof Naqdah but also called Amratianfor Al-mirah, is a distinct phase thatsucceeded the Badarian. It has beenfound as far south as Al-Kawm al-Ah mar (Hierakonpolis; ancient EgyptianNekhen), near the sandstone barrier ofMount Silsilah, which was the culturalboundary of Egypt in predynastic times.Naqdah I diers from its Badarian pre-decessor in its density of settlementand the typology of its material culturebut hardly at all in the social organiza-tion implied by the archaeological nds.

Burials were in shallow pits in which thebodies were placed facing to the west,like those of later Egyptians. Notabletypes of material found in graves are nepottery decorated with representationaldesigns in white on red, gurines of menand women, and hard stone mace-headsthat are the precursors of important latepredynastic objects.

Naqdah II, also known as Gerzeanfor Girza (Jirza), is the most importantpredynastic culture. The heartland ofits development was the same as thatof Naqdah I, but it spread graduallythroughout the country. South of MountSilsilah, sites of the culturally similarNubian A Group are found as far as theSecond Cataract of the Nile and beyond;these have a long span, continuing as late

as the Egyptian Early Dynastic period.During Naqdah II, large sites devel-oped at Al-Kawm al-Ahmar, Naqdah,and Abydos (Abds), showing by theirsize the concentration of settlement, as

well as exhibiting increasing dieren-tiation in wealth and status. Few siteshave been identied between AsytandAl-Fayym, and this region may havebeen sparsely settled, perhaps support-ing a pastoral rather than agriculturalpopulation. Near present-day CairoatAl-Umri, Al-Madi, and Wd Dijlahand stretching as far south as the latitudeof Al-Fayymare sites of a separate,contemporary culture. Al-Madi was anextensive settlement that traded withthe Middle East and probably acted asan intermediary for transmitting goods

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Painted clay vessel with amingos and ibexes,

Gerzean culture, Egypt, c.3400c. 3100 bc; inthe Roemer-Pelizaeus Museum, Hildesheim,

Ger. Holle Bilarchiv, Baen-Baen


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to the south. In this period, importsof lapis lazuli provide evidence thattrade networks extended as far aeld asAfghanistan.

The material culture of Naqdah IIincluded increasing numbers of prestigeobjects. The characteristic mortuary pot-tery is made of bu desert clay, principallyfrom around Qin, and is decorated inred with pictures of uncertain meaningshowing boats, animals, and scenes withhuman gures. Stone vases, many madeof hard stones that come from remoteareas of the Eastern Desert, are common

and of remarkable quality, and cosmeticpalettes display elaborate designs, withoutlines in the form of animals, birds, orsh. Flint was worked with extraordinaryskill to produce large ceremonial knivesof a type that continued in use duringdynastic times.

Sites of late Naqdah II (sometimestermed Naqdah III) are found through-out Egypt, including the Memphite areaand the delta region, and appear to havereplaced the local Lower Egyptian cultures.Links with the Middle East intensied,and some distinctively Mesopotamianmotifs and objects were briey in fashionin Egypt. The cultural unication of thecountry probably accompanied a politicalunication, but this must have proceededin stages and cannot be reconstructed

in detail. In an intermediate stage, localstates may have formed at Al-Kawm al-Ahmar, Naqdah, and Abydos and inthe delta at such sites as Buto (modernKawm al-Farn) and Sais (S al-Hajar).

Ultimately, Abydos became preeminent;its late predynastic cemetery of Ummal-Qab was extended to form the burialplace of the kings of the 1st dynasty.

In the latest predynastic period,objects bearing written symbols of roy-alty were deposited throughout thecountry, and primitive writing alsoappeared in marks on pottery. Becausethe basic symbol for the king, a falconon a decorated palace facade, hardly var-ies, these objects are thought to havebelonged to a single line of kings or asingle state, not to a set of small states.

This symbol became the royal Horusname, the rst element in a kings titu-lary, which presented the reigning kingas the manifestation of an aspect of thegod Horus, the leading god of the coun-try. Over the next few centuries severalfurther denitions of the kings presencewere added to this one.

Thus, at this time Egypt seems tohave been a state unied under kingswho introduced writing and the rstbureaucratic administration. Thesekings, who could have ruled for morethan a century, may correspond with a setof names preserved on the PalermoStone, but no direct identication can bemade between them. The latest was prob-ably Narmer, whose name has been foundnear Memphis, at Abydos, on a ceremo-

nial palette and mace-head from Al-Kawmal-Ahmar, and at the Palestinian sites ofTall Gat and Arad. The relief scenes onthe palette show him wearing the twochief crowns of Egypt and defeating


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northern enemies, but these probably arestereotyped symbols of the kings powerand role and not records of specic eventsof his reign. They demonstrate that theposition of the king in society and its pre-sentation in mixed pictorial and writtenform had been elaborated by the early3rd millennium .

During this time Egyptian artisticstyle and conventions were formulated,together with writing. The process led toa complete and remarkably rapid trans-formation of material culture, so thatmany dynastic Egyptian prestige objects

hardly resembled their forerunners.

TE ST DNAST(c. c. BC)

The beginning of the historical period ischaracterized by the introduction of writ-ten records in the form of regnal yearnamesthe records that later were col-lected in documents such as the PalermoStone. The rst king of Egyptian history,Menes, is therefore a creation of the laterrecord, not the actual unier of the coun-try; he is known from Egyptian king listsand from classical sources and is creditedwith irrigation works and with foundingthe capital, Memphis. On small objectsfrom this time, one of them dated to theimportant king Narmer but certainly

mentioning a dierent person, there aretwo possible mentions of a Men whomay be the king Menes. If these do nameMenes, he was probably the same personas Aha, Narmers probable successor,

who was then the founder of the 1stdynasty. Changes in the naming patternsof kings reinforce the assumption that anew dynasty began with his reign.

Ahas tomb at Abydos is altogethermore grandiose than previously built

tombs, while the rst of a series of mas-sive tombs at Saqqrah, next to Memphis,supports the tradition that the city wasfounded then as a new capital. Thisshift from Abydos is the culmination of

Figure perhaps representing Menes on a

victory tablet of Egyptian king Narmer,

c. 2925c. 2775 bc. Courtesy of the Egyptian

Museum, Cairo; photograph, HirmerFotoarchiv, Munich

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intensied settlement in the crucial areabetween the Nile River valley and thedelta, but Memphis did not yet overcomethe traditional pull of its predecessor. Thelarge tombs at S

aqqrah appear to belong

to high ocials, while the kings were bur-ied at Abydos in tombs whose walledcomplexes have long since disappeared.Their mortuary cults may have been con-ducted in designated areas nearer thecultivation.

In the late Predynastic period and therst half of the 1st dynasty, Egyptextended its inuence into southern

Palestine and probably Sinai and con-ducted a campaign as far as the SecondCataract. The First Cataract area, with itscentre on Elephantine, an island in theNile opposite the present-day town ofAswn, was permanently incorporatedinto Egypt, but Lower Nubia was not.

Between late predynastic timesand the 4th dynastyand probably earlyin the periodthe Nubian A Group cameto an end. There is some evidence thatpolitical centralization was in progressaround Qustul, but this did not lead toany further development and may indeedhave prompted a preemptive strike byEgypt. For Nubia, the malign proximity ofthe largest state of the time stiedadvancement. During the 1st dynasty,writing spread gradually, but because it

was used chiey for administration, therecords, which were kept within the ood-plain, have not survived. The articialwriting medium of papyrus was inventedby the middle of the 1st dynasty. Therewas a surge in prosperity, and thousands

of tombs of all levels of wealth have beenfound throughout the country. The rich-est contained magnicent goods inmetal, ivory, and other materials, the mostwidespread luxury products beingextraordinarily ne stone vases. The highpoint of 1st-dynasty development was thelong reign of Den (ourished c. 2850 ).

During the 1st dynasty three titleswere added to the royal Horus name:Two Ladies, an epithet presenting theking as making manifest an aspect ofthe protective goddesses of the south(Upper Egypt) and the north (Lower

Egypt); Golden Horus, the precisemeaning of which is unknown; andDual King, a ranked pairing of thetwo basic words for king, later associ-ated with Upper and Lower Egypt. Thesetitles were followed by the kings ownbirth name, which in later centuries waswritten in a cartouche.

TE ND DNAST(c. c. BC)

From the end of the 1st dynasty, there isevidence of rival claimants to the throne.One line may have become the 2nddynasty, whose rst kings Horus name,Hetepsekhemwy, means peaceful inrespect of the two powers and mayallude to the conclusion of strife between

two factions or parts of the country, to theantagonistic gods Horus and Seth, or toboth. Hetepsekhemwy and his successor,Reneb, moved their burial places toSaqqrah; the tomb of the third king,Nynetjer, has not been found.


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E w

Egyptian law originated with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under King Menes (c.2925 Bc) and grew and developed until the Roman occupation of Egypt (30 Bc). It is older thanthat of any other civilization. Even after the Roman occupation, elements of Egyptian law were

retained outside the major urban areas.No formal Egyptian code of law has been preserved, although several pharaohs, such as

Bocchoris (c. 722c. 715 Bc), were known as lawgivers. After the 7th century Bc, however, whenthe Demotic language (the popular form of the written language) came into use, many legaltransactions required written deeds or contracts instead of the traditional oral agreement; andthese extant documents have been studied for what they reveal of the law of ancient Egypt.

The ultimate authority in the settlement of disputes was the pharaoh, whose decrees weresupreme. Because of the complex nature of legal administration, the pharaoh delegated powersto provincial governors and other o cials. Next to the pharaoh, the most powerful individualwas the vizier, who directed all administrative branches of the government. He sat in judgment

on court cases and appointed magistrates as part of his legal duties.In a legal proceeding, the plainti was required to bring suit. The tribunal then ordered the

defendant to appear in court if a point of law seemed to be involved in the dispute. Scribesemployed in the legal system supplied procedural information; the parties were not representedby legal advocates. Both parties spoke for themselves and presented any pertinent documen-tary evidence. Witnesses sometimes were called, but usually the judge ruled on the grounds ofthe documents and the testimony of each party. The judgment included recommendations for

preserving the written record of the trialpossibly the main reason why many of these docu-ments are extant.

Although masculine primogeniture dominated in some periods of Egyptian history, there

are records of property being divided equally among the children, male and female. Even withmasculine primogeniture, the other children and the surviving spouse usually received a shareof the estate. The usual law of succession could be circumvented by a special enregistered doc-ument: a parent, for example, could favour a daughter by guaranteeing her rights over thefamily property. Legal judgments pertaining to the family and rights of succession clearly dem-onstrate that women as well as men were granted full rights under the laws of ancient Egypt.Women owned and bequeathed property, filed lawsuits, and bore witness in court proceedingswithout the authority of their father or husband. The working class also had some legal rights;even slaves were allowed to own property under certain circumstances.

Property transfers and contractual agreements were conducted as if they were the same

type of legal transaction. Rental of slaves, for example, was regarded as a sales agreement.Work was often bartered for various commodities. The individual parties were allowed to deter-mine restrictions and guarantees in their transaction concerning possible defects in the

property or service as well as defects in the law.Criminal justice necessitated a hierarchy in the judicial system, depending on the severity

of the charge. The most heinous criminals could be judged only by the pharaoh, often with the

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vizier conducting the investigation and turning to the pharaoh for final judgment. In somecases, the pharaoh appointed a special commission with full authority to pass judgment.Punishment for serious crimes included penal servitude and execution; mutilation and floggingwere often used to punish lesser oenders.

Although punishment for criminal oenders could be severeand, in the modern viewpoint,

barbaricEgyptian law nevertheless was admirable in its support of basic human rights. Thepharaoh Bocchoris, for example, promoted individual rights, suppressed imprisonment fordebt, and reformed laws relating to the transferral of property. His legal innovations are oneexample of the far-reaching implications of Egyptian law: the Greek lawgiver Solon (6th cen-tury Bc) visited Egypt and adapted aspects of the legal system to his own ideas for Athens.Egyptian law continued to influence Greek law during the Hellenistic period, and its eects onRoman imperial law may still be felt today.

The second half of the dynasty was atime of conict and rival lines of kings,some of whose names are preserved onstone vases from the 3rd-dynasty StepPyramid at Saqqrah or in king lists.Among these contenders, Peribsen tookthe title of Seth instead of Horus and wasprobably opposed by Horus Khasekhem,whose name is known only from Kawmal-Ahmar and who used the program-matic epithet eective sandal againstevil. The last ruler of the dynasty com-bined the Horus and Seth titles to formthe Horus-and-Seth Khasekhemwy, aris-ing in respect of the two powers, towhich was added the two lords are atpeace in him. Khasekhemwy was prob-ably the same person as Khasekhem

after the successful defeat of his rivals,principally Peribsen. Both Peribsen andKhasekhemwy had tombs at Abydos, andthe latter also built a monumental brickfunerary enclosure near the cultivation.

TE RD DNAST(c. c. BC)

There were links of kinship betweenKhasekhemwy and the 3rd dynasty, butthe change between them is marked bya denitive shift of the royal burial placeto Memphis. Its rst king, Sanakhte,is attested in reliefs from Maghra inSinai. His successor, Djoser (Horusname Netjerykhet; reigned 26302611), was one of the outstanding kingsof Egypt. His Step Pyramid at Saqqrahis both the culmination of an epochandas the rst large all-stone build-ing, many times larger than anythingattempted beforethe precursor of later

achievements.The oldest extant monument of

hewn stone known to the world, the pyr-amid consists of six steps and attains aheight of 200 feet (61 metres). It is set


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The Step Pyramid of King Djoser atSaqqrah, Egypt, c. 2650 bc. Katherine Young/EB Inc.

sites) into a six-stepped, almost squarepyramid. There was a second, symbolictomb with a at superstructure on thesouth side of the enclosure, which prob-ably substituted for the traditional royalburial place of Abydos. The king andsome of his family were buried deepunder the pyramid, where tens of thou-sands of stone vases were deposited, anumber bearing inscriptions of the rsttwo dynasties. Thus, in perpetuatingearlier forms in stone and burying thismaterial, Djoser invoked the past in sup-port of his innovations.

in a much larger enclosure than that ofKhasekhemwy at Abydos and containsreproductions in stone of ritual structuresthat had previously been built of per-ishable materials. Architectural detailsof columns, cornices, and moldingsprovided many models for later develop-ment. The masonry techniques look tobrickwork for models and show little con-cern for the structural potential of stone.The pyramid itself evolved throughnumerous stages from a at mastaba (anoblong tomb with a burial chamber dugbeneath it, common at earlier nonroyal

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Djosers name was famous in latertimes, and his monument was studied inthe Late period. Imhotep, whose title as amaster sculptor is preserved from theStep Pyramid complex, may have been itsarchitect; he lived on into the next reign.His fame also endured, and in the Lateperiod he was deied and became a god

of healing. In Manethos history he isassociated with reforms of writing, andthis may reect a genuine tradition, forhieroglyphs were simplied and stan-dardized at that time.

Djosers successor, Sekhemkhet,planned a still more grandiose step pyra-mid complex at Saqqrah, and a later king,Khaba, began one at Zawyat al-Aryan, afew miles south of Giza. The burial placeof the last king of the dynasty, Huni, isunknown. It has often been suggestedthat he built the pyramid of Maydm,

but this probably was the work of hissuccessor, Snefru. Inscribed materialnaming 3rd-dynasty kings is known fromMaghra to Elephantine but not from theMiddle East or Nubia.

Im

Born in Memphis, Egypt, in the 27th century Bc, Imhotep (Greek: Imouthes) was a vizier, a sage,an architect, an astrologer, and the chief minister to Djoser. He was later worshipped as the god

of medicine in Egypt and in Greece, where he was identified with the Greek god of medicine,Asclepius.

Although no contemporary account has been found that refers to Imhotep as a practicingphysician, ancient documents illustrating Egyptian society and medicine during the OldKingdom (c. 2575 c. 2130Bc) show that the chief magician of the pharaohs court also frequentlyserved as the nations chief physician. Imhoteps reputation as the reigning genius of the time,his position in the court, his training as a scribe, and his becoming known as a medical demigodonly 100 years after his death are strong indications that he must have been a physician ofconsiderable skill.

Not until the Persian conquest of Egypt in 525 Bc was Imhotep elevated to the position of a

full deity, replacing Nefertem in the great triad of Memphis. Imhoteps cult reached its zenithduring Greco-Roman times, when his temples in Memphis and on the island of Philae (Arabic:Jazrat Flah) in the Nile River were often crowded with suerers who prayed and slept therewith the conviction that the god would reveal remedies to them in their dreams. The onlyEgyptian mortal besides the 18th-dynasty sage and minister Amenhotep to attain the honour oftotal deification, Imhotep is still held in esteem by physicians who, like the eminent 19th-cen-tury British practitioner Sir William Osler, consider him the first figure of a physician to standout clearly from the mists of antiquity.


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Otherwise, little evidence comes from theprovinces, from which wealth must haveowed to the centre, leaving no rich localelite. By the 3rd dynasty the rigid struc-ture of the later nomes, or provinces,which formed the basis of Old Kingdomadministration, had been created, andthe imposition of its uniform pattern mayhave impoverished local centres. Tombsof the elite at Saqqrah, notably those ofHezyre and Khabausokar, contained artis-tic masterpieces that look forward to theOld Kingdom.

The organizational achievementsof the 3rd dynasty are reected in itsprincipal monument, whose messageof centralization and concentration ofpower is reinforced in a negative senseby the archaeological record. Outsidethe vicinity of Memphis, the Abydosarea continued to be important, and fourenormous tombs, probably of high o-cials, were built at the nearby site of BaytKhallaf; there were small, nonmortuarystep pyramids throughout the country,some of which may date to the 4th dynasty.

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CAPTER 3T O

M Km

The period discussed in this chapter extends from c. 2575

to 1540 . It includes the Old Kingdom (encompassingthe 4th to 8th dynasties,c. 25752130 ), the First Intermediateperiod (9th to 11th dynasties, c. 21301938 ), the MiddleKingdom (12th and 13th dynasties, 19381630 ), and theSecond Intermediate period (c. 16301540 ).

TE OLD KINGDOM (c. c. BC)

The Old Kingdom is usually dierentiated from earlier timesby the presence of a strong central government. Although therst pyramids had been built by this timenotably ImhotepsStep Pyramid built at Saqqrah for Djoserit was during theOld Kingdom that the greatest of pyramids were constructed.

The 4th Dynasty (c. 2575c. 2465 bc)

In a long perspective, the 4th dynasty was an isolated phe-nomenon, a period when the potential of centralization wasrealized to its utmost and a disproportionate amount of the

states resources was used on the kings mortuary provisions,almost certainly at the expense of general living standards.No signicant 4th-dynasty sites have been found away fromthe Memphite area. Tomb inscriptions show that high o -cials were granted estates scattered over many nomes,especially in the delta. This pattern of landholding may have


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T Od d Mdd Kd | 43

the most characteristic Egyptian sym-bols. The cartouche itself is older andwas shown as a gift bestowed by godson the king, signifying long duration onthe throne. It soon acquired associationswith the sun, so that its rst use by thebuilder of the rst true pyramid, whichis probably also a solar symbol, is notcoincidental.

Snefrus successor, Khufu (Cheops),built the Great Pyramid at Giza (Al-Jzah),to which were added the slightly smallersecond pyramid of one of Khufus sons,Khafre (more correctly Rekhaef,

Ancient Egypt - From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest

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